


Did it end like this?

by shetlandowl



Series: One of Us [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, One way the story could end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 07:34:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14588142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shetlandowl/pseuds/shetlandowl
Summary: For Tony's own good, Steve drove away.





	1. Four months later

It was almost unfair to call it a different country. If Tony had been pressed to pick this landscape out of a line-up, he may have mistaken it for a relaxed corner of New York City. For all the hype about polite, friendly Canadians, nobody seemed to care or even notice his presence. Tony was a little disappointed. 

He checked the notes in his phone again to confirm the address. It had taken him weeks to get a hold of it. Shield Publication’s new Editor-in-Chief had been unimpressed and unmoved by his attempts to reach out to her predecessor no matter what title or name he dropped to impress her. He had finally managed to strong arm Fury into hosting an event for the executive board just so he could pay a visit to Carter’s office after hours. 

How her assistant had even noticed him snooping around her office still eluded him, but in the end, Barnes had been too late to stop Tony from getting his hands on Steve’s new contact information. 

Now, four months after being abandoned at the altar, Tony had finally found Steve. 

Tony pressed his thumb down over the new contact in his phone until an error message popped up to confirm that he wanted to make the call. He hesitated for a moment, staring at the unfamiliar number like a deer in headlights. There was no plan; there was no speech. He didn’t even know what he wanted. 

Closure. He needed closure. 

He dialed the number and put the phone to his ear before he had another chance to doubt himself. 

“You have reached 416 605 8011,” Steve’s recorded voice eventually answered. “Leave a message and your number after the tone.”

“Steve, it’s me,” Tony said at first, then immediately regretted it. What did that even mean? A lot could have changed in four months. After all, he had only known Steve for two weeks, and look at him now. 

“It’s Tony,” he clarified, more quietly. “I—”

There was a _click_ on the other end of the line, and Tony stopped talking immediately. He held his breath, unsure of what the sound meant, and afraid that Steve had deliberately hung up on him, because what else could it be? 

Softly, Steve’s voice broke the silence. “Tony?” he asked in genuine wonder. Even after all this time, Tony could imagine his incredulous shock so clearly, as if Steve was standing beside him again in that precise moment.

“Is it really you?”

“This will be really embarrassing if you’ve already forgotten the sound of my voice,” Tony drawled in reply, but somehow his words fell short of his intended sarcasm. He cleared his throat awkwardly, but quickly decided there was nothing for it. He hadn’t come all this way to play coy. 

“Be- because I think about your voice often,” he confessed quietly. “I think about you—I, uh. Miss you, a lot.”

“Tony, how did you get this number?” Steve asked him after a brief silence. 

He had expected Steve to ask him, but that didn’t make it less painful. “Carter,” Tony said in a half-truth. 

Steve let out a long, quiet sigh. “You shouldn’t have called,” he said eventually. “You need to move on, Tony.”

Something about Steve’s tone had Tony’s hackles rising, and before he had a chance to think twice, he blurted out, “Have you, Steve? Is that why you don’t want to talk to me, you’ve moved on? Found someone else?”

“Tony, you deserve to move on,” Steve answered in a voice so gentle and kind that it made Tony see red.

“—don’t tell me what I deserve!” he snarled. “You want me to get what I deserve, then give me a goddamn explanation, Steve. I _deserve_ to know why you ran out on me.”

“Tony,” Steve whispered, turning his name into a strained, desperate plea. “Please, don’t do this. Don’t make this worse. It was ten days, let it go.” 

“Fuck you, ‘it was ten days,’” Tony glowered. “Who cares how long it was? It was a beginning, Steve. Our beginning. I’m not asking for much, I just—Steve, _please_ ,” he all but begged, “just, will you talk to me? What did I do wrong?” 

“Sweetheart, you did everything right,” Steve promised him, sniffing quietly. After a brief silence, he continued. “You are a kind man, Tony. You’re thoughtful, you’re smart. You’re generous to a fault.”

“Stop lying to me. I came all this way, Steve,” Tony told him, struggling to keep his voice steady and maintain his composure. “The least you can do is be honest with me. Please. Why did you leave?”

There was a long, unnatural pause on the other end of the line. 

“What do you mean you came all this way?”

“I’m here,” Tony said simply. “500 Queens Quay.”

“Don’t,” Steve stammered at first, and Tony braced himself, expecting the worst. “Don’t move.”

Tony could make out the quiet, muffled sound of the receiver being put down, and distantly he wondered why the hell people still had landlines. Did they even make those anymore, or had Steve found an antique? But offices had landlines, so why was it bizarre to think people still had them? 

He was busying himself mulling the question over in an effort to keep from going crazy with anticipation. This was taking too long; was Steve digging through his closet for a bat? Did Canadians have baseball, would they have baseball bats? Would it hurt less to be hit with a hockey stick? Tony should have looked this up beforehand. 

“Tony.”

Slowly, Tony turned. 

There was Steve, just as Tony remembered him. Tall, broad, confident. His jeans looked more casual, less tailored, and the untied sneakers on his feet made Tony smile. 

“Ten minutes,” were the first words out of Tony’s mouth. “Just, come on. Please? You owe me ten minutes. Tell me what happened.”

Steve didn’t say a word, but he gestured at the walking path leading away from his building and led the way. Tony easily fell into step beside him. 

Neither of them said anything for some time, but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. Tony felt the world around them settling into a more peaceful, soothing thrum. The chaos of everything that passed around them felt less important, somehow, as if what mattered was finally clear. 

Steve may not have been the guiding light or what gave Tony’s life meaning, but his presence had begun to give Tony clarity, and confidence in his decisions. In their short time together, Tony had found someone whose opinion he valued, respected, and wanted to hear. A partner to support him on his own path rather than a treasure to live for. 

Around them, tourists and locals alike flocked to the Harbourfront to enjoy the warmth of another beautiful summer day. Tony couldn’t help but watch as laughing families lingered over their ice creams, and young couples walked arm in arm, blissfully in love. 

“I didn’t leave because of anything you did,” Steve said, apropos of nothing. He walked with his hands in his pockets, and his shoulders hunched—not out of fear or anxiety, Tony could tell, but as a consequence of struggling with his words. 

At least that made two of them. 

“I was,” Steve continued with a frown, pursing his lips together in an unhappy, straight line, as if he couldn’t stand to let the words be shared out loud. Then, with a tired sigh, he slowed to a stop at the edge of the pedestrian deck and turned to face Tony. 

“I was being deported,” Steve finally admitted. “I’m Canadian. I loved my job; I loved my life. I didn’t want to lose it. So, I, I thought I could find an American to marry me.”

“But then I got to know you, Tony. I don’t… I didn’t know,” he frowned to himself, rubbing at his forehead absently as he tried to think it through. “I don’t know how I feel about you, Tony. Being with you, I felt—I felt clear? My priorities, they became clearer. I’ve always been… of use, somehow. It’s easy to feel good about that; to feel needed. You know what’s expected of you when you’re of use. I thought this would be similar, I, well. I expected an unspoken but, um. Fair? Trade. I thought my money would be enough. Keep a husband long enough for the paperwork to go through. But, the way you treated me, you. You made me feel important. Inherently, without any evidence. I’ve never… well. I guess, it was scary. You didn’t care about money, so I had nothing to offer in, in return. I couldn’t do that to you.”

Tony watched him stumble through his explanation. He knew he should feel surprised. He should feel shocked, betrayed. Maybe he’d simply exhausted all of those particular emotions when Steve got back into the truck and didn’t come back. 

It really was a beautiful day. The sky was clear, not a cloud as far as the eyes could see. The lake stretched for countless miles, until it was indistinguishable from the sky. He gazed out over the horizon as he struggled to work through Steve’s explanation. It helped to keep him calm, to distance himself enough to think clearly. To remember. 

“You lied to me,” he eventually said, his jaw working with his rising tension. “You lied about being Canadian.”

Steve hung his head for a moment, but he nodded vaguely in the affirmative. “I did.”

“You told me you wanted to get married—needed to get married,” Tony corrected himself, his voice still even and calm. “For different reasons, but you said it.”

“That wasn’t a lie—” Steve started to say, but Tony held up his hand to quiet him. Steve shut his mouth. 

“I agreed to marry you for my reasons, not for yours,” Tony reminded him, quietly. “This life, in the city, in an office. In front of a computer. This is the last life I imagined for myself. It isn’t what I wanted; it never was. I was meant to work, not whatever this is. You’re not the only one who could use stability, Steve,” he pointed out, but he said it with a frown rather than a smile. “You’re not the only one who’s afraid, or alone.”

Steve crossed his arms and struggled to keep himself from looking away, from turning away from Tony. As Tony watched him, he could practically hear the gears turning, the scales shifting with every heartbeat on whether to stay or to run away.

“You’re right,” he told Steve then, in case his ten minutes were up and Steve bolted, again. “I never wanted your money, Steve. I just wanted a life I could belong in again. I thought I could make that with you.”

The twitchy discomfort stilled in Steve’s posture, and he turned away for a moment to hide his face in his hands. Tony could count the slow, full breaths Steve took, five of them, before he let his hands drop and turned to face Tony again. 

“I’m sorry I let you down, Tony,” he said with clear sincerity. “If I could do it over again, there’s so much I know now that I would do differently. But I didn’t know better then, and I can’t change the past. If there’s anything I can do now, that wouldn’t overstep—that wouldn’t hurt you more, please, tell me.”

New York was at the other side of that horizon, Tony thought to himself. They were so close. 

“Will you be coming back to the City?”

“I don’t know,” Steve replied, apologetic in his tone. “Depends on where I move for work. I just know I won’t be staying here.”

Tony nodded, more to himself than for Steve. “When you know what you’re gonna do, and what you want,” Tony said then, just as quietly, “give me a call.”

Despite his absence of a plan, or a speech, Tony felt a calm wash over him. He had said what he needed to say, and there was nothing more he could do. Steve didn’t say anything when he looked at him, but he nodded in understanding. That was as good as Tony could have hoped for. 

_Good-bye_ felt unfair, and so did _see you later._ In the end, all he could do was nod back, and walk away. 

His phone rang from his jacket pocket, and Tony reflexively started patting himself down to find it. It was an unknown number, but given his line of business, he answered it anyway.

“This is Tony Stark,” he said into the phone, clearing his throat quietly. 

“Hi, Tony,” said a familiar voice. 

Slowly, he turned around. The blond he had run into four months ago was standing two or three yards away, his own phone to his ear. He watched Tony with cautious hope. 

“Tony, I miss you more than words could express. Would you go out on a date with me?”


	2. (Four months and) One day later

Strong, gentle fingers stroked through his hair, easing Tony out of his first restful sleep in a long time. 

“Tony, sweetheart,” he heard Steve whispering, a smile lifting his words with a cheerful melody. He smelled different now; Tony could still make out the natural musk of his skin where it mixed with new, unfamiliar scents. Sandalwood? Maybe sage. 

He curled into Steve’s touch, moaning under his breath about how absolutely unfair mornings were. Even he didn’t know what he was saying, but whatever it was, he could hear Steve grinning somewhere over him. 

“Sorry, sweetheart, but breakfast is almost ready,” Steve told him quietly, pressing a soft kiss to his temple in apology. “I don’t want to eat alone, so do you want to eat in bed or at the table?”

“Shhhhhh,” Tony tried instead, pushing Steve’s face away. Except, Steve caught his hand, pulled it away from his face, then leaned in to press a tender, lingering kiss Tony on the lips. 

Tony gasped against Steve’s lips, and all at once, the memory of his wish from back home returned to him. Sleep faded from his mind as he returned Steve’s kiss with eager enthusiasm, even pushing up on an elbow for better leverage. 

“Let’s eat in bed,” he decided, cupping the back of Steve’s head to bring him closer for more kisses still. “Leave the shirt,” he murmured against Steve’s lips between one kiss and the next, in case he hadn’t been clear enough. “Bring me the sausage.”

Steve huffed a quiet laugh into his mouth, and with one last kiss, he stepped away to do as he’d been told. He returned soon enough with a tray of soft boiled eggs, avocado toast, and hot honey-sweetened tea. 

“You’re still dressed,” Tony observed with a little pout, but he sat up against the cushioned headboard anyway, taking the tray from Steve so that he could get into bed, too. 

“So are you,” Steve pointed out, bundling up under the blanket and leaning in to kiss Tony’s cheek. 

“Where’s the coffee?” Tony grumbled, and as if to rub salt in the wound, Steve went for the tea first.

“It’s not a work day,” he said, even managing to say it all with a straight face. “Coffee is for work days.”

“Coffee is _life_ ,” Tony replied emphatically, but still he mirrored Steve and picked up a cup of tea for himself. He sniffed it suspiciously, blew on it softly, then took a cautious sip. 

Steve watched him raised brows, clearly waiting for the verdict. 

“It’s not bad,” Tony conceded after a beat, sniffing quietly to himself. “Thank you for breakfast.”

“I should be thanking you,” Steve smiled back at him. “I’ve never had a more handsome stalker.”

Tony rolled his eyes and gave Steve the driest look he could muster while trying not to snicker. “You know what, Sparky? Sass can only be served on coffee days.” 

“Can any exceptions be made for ring days?”

Tony jolted upright and sucked in a sudden breath when he nearly burned himself. Whether he was burned or not, however, didn’t matter, and he ignored the lingering sting of hot water to look at Steve in wide-eyed surprise. 

Steve was holding a small bag of Gummi rings. 

“Jesus—you’re such an ass. I’m leaving,” Tony announced, and Steve grinned like the delighted little devil he could be. As the shock waned, Tony could feel a warm joy rising deep in his chest to take its place. 

“You’re leaving already?” Steve asked with a little pout as he played along, but he grinned back when Tony rolled his eyes. 

“After breakfast,” Tony drawled, petulant with his sarcasm. “You think this is funny, Steven? This is serious.” 

“Well, if you’re set on leaving,” Steve said simply, reaching for the tray. He pushed aside a small plate of the leftover avocados and fished up a keyring with three unassuming keys dangling on it. “How about this ring?” 

Tony blinked wildly in surprise. He couldn’t look away from the little keyring if he’d tried. 

“I mean,” Steve said, becoming less confident as a long stretch of silence passed between them. “It’s, uh. It’s symbolic? Cause this is—it’s a six month lease. I don’t really want to live in this city.”

Steve abruptly stopped himself, and Tony shook his head before Steve felt the need to continue. 

“Stop talking,” Tony mumbled, putting his cup of tea away to gently take the keyring from Steve. He cradled it in his hand reverently, then finally, confused and still disbelieving, looked up at Steve. “Are you…?”

“Proposing?” Steve guessed, by the look in Tony’s eyes. “I don’t—look, what I said before about stability… I meant it. I don’t need a marriage license. I don’t need anything, except your word. If last night was it for you, if all you wanted was closure, I, I get it. But if you’re—if you, you—”

“Yes,” Tony said before Steve had the chance to find the rest of his sentence, closing his hand around the keyring. “Yes, I do: yes, this is the ring I want. It’s mine now; you can’t take it back, stop talking.”

“You mean it?” Steve asked in a whisper, keeping his voice low, as if he was too scared to ask too loudly. “You’ll come back to me, after all this?”

For a moment, Tony’s confusion creased his forehead with a frown, but he caught on quickly. He shook his head once. 

“If it’s all the same to you, Sparky,” he said with a smile, “I’d rather just stay.”


End file.
